Developer Spends Hours Debugging MCP Tools Only to Find Expired GitHub Token Was the Cause
A developer using Claude Desktop on Windows 11 found that all 26 tools listed by the GitHub MCP server failed instantly with a vague 'Tool execution failed' error and no further detail. The developer initially suspected a bad GitHub token but dismissed the idea after regenerating it three times and noting that even public repository access — which requires no authentication — also failed. This led to hours of investigation down unrelated paths, including checking web-based connector behavior, which turned out to be a red herring. The breakthrough came only when the developer examined the MCP log files, located in the Claude app's local logs folder, which revealed error code -32603 being returned by the server on every tool call. In hindsight, the original token hypothesis had never actually been ruled out — the test used to dismiss it was flawed, and the token turned out to be the root cause all along.
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